Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

In the 2011 budget, the previous Government included indicative headings of savings that it did not announce or, in some cases, specify. I have advised the Deputy of this fact previously.

The Department is a major purchaser of utility services. Upon becoming Minister, I was surprised to learn that the Department did not get much in the way of discounts. The change to the telephone allowance is effectively a discount, with free rental of telephones provided by Eircom. The previous Minister may have been affected by this problem and I do not know whether he entered into negotiations. The nub of the problem seems to be that, according to the advice of the Chief State Solicitor's office, the Department of Social Protection does not have the right to go to the market to procure electricity as it is not the customer in the first instance and, therefore, has no entitlement to approach the market. To make matters even better, the Competition Authority stated that it is more important than ever that any scheme administered by the Department should not favour one electricity supplier over another.

I am obtaining legal advice on this matter. I do not know whether the previous Minister did so. Effectively, the current advice means that, although the Department is spending more than €500 million purchasing gas, electricity and other utilities for its clients, we have no right to get bulk discounts. I am confident that previous Ministers must have been aware of this feature of competition law, but we may need to change that law.

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